The material means people are starting to copy and even improve on the characteristics of natural materials such as nacre.

The researchers are stilj at the desk-top proof of concept level but it sounds like this should be pretty easy to scale up.

Besides its light weight and superior flexibility, the new material could be made transparent according to the researchers.

Researchers have dispersed tiny platelets of aluminum oxide in a polymer to make a material that is tough, stretchy, and lightweight. The material could lead to longer-lasting bone and dental implants and lighter, more fuel-efficient car and airplane parts. It could also be used to make bendable, transparent electronics.

In their efforts to create strong yet light materials, chemists and materials scientists have long tried to mimic nanostructures found in nature. Shells, bones, and tooth enamel all consist of stiff ceramic platelets arranged in a polymer matrix like bricks in mortar. These hybrid materials combine the strength of ceramics and the stretchability of polymers.

In 2007, University of Michigan researchers engineered clay-reinforced polymers that were extremely strong but brittle: it takes a lot of energy to deform them, but when they do deform, they break abruptly. Researchers at MIT succeeded in making stiff but less brittle clay-polymer composites, which will tolerate some stretching before they break. (See "Ultra-Tough Nanotech Materials.")

Ludwig Gauckler, the professor of materials at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, in Switzerland, who led the new work, says that his group's composite is better still. It's five times as strong as the material made at MIT, he says, yet it's still stretchy. A film of the composite is already as strong as aluminum foil, Gauckler says, but if stretched, it can expand by up to 25 percent of its size; aluminum foil would break at 2 percent.

An added advantage of the hybrid material is that it's light, says Harvard materials scientist Andre Studart, who was involved in the work. The material is half to a quarter as heavy as steel of the same strength, Studart says, and it would make a good substitute for fiberglass, which is commonly used in car parts. Because the material's strength comes from the platelets diffused through it, Studart says, "it will be strong in two directions and not only in one direction, as in the case of fiber-reinforced material."

Moreover, while the material is translucent now, its structure could be modified to render it transparent, making it suitable for dental material and transparent electronic circuits.